It must be daunting to be a start-up founder not least because these days the resources available to help budding entrepreneurs are limitless. There are blogs by intrepid VC and angel investors, articles published by tech-focussed media; there are talks, podcasts and office hours where seasoned investors help entrepreneurs with advice, speed-dating style.

If you are a founder about to embark on a fundraising journey (a cliché but really it is a journey: challenging, enervating and ultimately, if the stars align, rewarding), I want to offer some practical advice.
 
I’ve come across plenty of online tips in terms of contents of an investor presentation. Medha Agarwal has summarised 10 essential components of a fundraising pitch deck. Ultimately, it all depends on the stage of your business but the ingredients suggested here are the right ones. My only additional advice would be that you must ensure your deck tells a story. The slides should flow well. Even if you are sending out your deck rather than presenting it in person, try to read the presentation aloud and see whether its narrative flows. If it doesn’t, make it as consistent and engaging as possible.
 
My own practical tip is this: hire a graphic designer.
 
At Silvergate Investments, we get several pitches each week. I am seriously impressed with the presentation quality of the decks I receive. Some of them are works of art! I came to believe that regardless of the content, the visual presentation is incredibly important. This is because – for better or for worse – we tend to judge the book by its cover, so it’s essential to make a good first impression. The design of your deck is also important because you are competing for investor attention with other opportunities. If other entrepreneurs looking for capital send me outstanding looking decks, you need to do the same. Trust me, home-made Powerpoint presentations with busy slides and inconsistent fonts look really bad in comparison to professionally designed decks.  

​I asked entrepreneurs who sent me some of the best-in-class pitch decks to refer the designers they had used to help tell their growth stories. Jess Hook, the founder of non-alcoholic wine Outfox, worked with a freelance designer Hannah Bloomfield.  Her pitch was beautifully designed, convincing and demonstrated a big vision, as well as attention to detail. 

The founder of Niche Tea startup, Amanda Miles Ricketts, sent me a deck with gorgeous images of her tea which signalled "premium" and "luxury". She worked with John Gilsenan of IWANT design agency. 

The pitch deck by Yang Liu for her business Just Wears, a male underwear line, was fun and playful, reflecting the brand perfectly. Yang used Adobe's InDesign software to create the deck herself(!). 

The founders of a HealthTech start-up Heally, based in New York, worked with Ariel Kohan of Pitchdeck XYZ. I learned that the US was ahead of the game with agencies specialising in pitch deck services and showcasing presentations which had helped to raise millions of dollars in funding. 

Diana Greenhaulgh, co-founder of MyBespokeRoom, an online interior design marketplace for consumers and SAAS for designers, had a chuckle when I asked her if she had used a designer for her great deck. "We live and breathe design, Jana, of course I created the deck myself!". She used Canva, a freemium online publishing tool (and now a $2.5bn company), to help visualise her fundraising story. 

These insights apply to the corporate world beyond start-ups too. I bet investment banks and corporates still use dull and busy looking powerpoint slides... If you are putting together a presentation for a new project or a change in strategy, it would really pay to invest in design. Just as when we are listening to a speaker and take in her attire, posture, mannerisms and tone of voice before we digest the contents of her speech - the style, colours and typography of your presentations make the first impression before we pay attention to words and figures. 

As for the founders who often find that they don't get a meeting and the only pitch they get to present to a VC is the deck  they sent across by email, it literally pays to put your best foot forward. 

At the end of last year I read a curious article What I learnt from a year of reading only books by women by Alice Fishburn, the editor of the FT Weekend Magazine. The author of the article realised that she ordinarily read mostly male writers and decided to give herself a challenge of reading women only for a year. It turned into a fun and thought-provoking experiment. "No one is trying to explain women to me. Female characters and viewpoints suddenly simply exist: whether flawed or flaming, badly drawn or richly nuanced. There they are without spin. Unexplained. Unfiltered. Understood."

Inevitably, Fishburn's article provoked a bit of a sour reaction from some. Some people said they chose what to read regardless of gender, as long as it was good... Is it a fair point? I don't think so. Granted, literary prizes are usually won by men and male writers are published more than women which means that we mostly read novels by male authors. But what if it was a vicious circle? What if we made an effort to buy more books by female writers; the publishers will surely notice and start publishing more women which will lead them to win prizes more often. All we need to do is create more demand for women's fiction and as a result our bookshelves and minds will become more diverse.

Ah, diversity. You knew I'd end up slotting this word in and indeed here it is. Inspired by Fishburn, I wanted to make my reading more diverse this year. Normally I read pretty widely in a sense that I read both fiction and non-fiction, and I often pick up a crime or a sci-fi novel. I make sure I read at least a couple of books a year in Russian, which is always a treat. At the beginning of January I read an article about books which are likely to make some noise this year (e.g. "The Testaments" by Margaret Atwood) and I realised that most authors mentioned were Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, those of us who live in the UK or in the US mostly read British or American authors. And yet when Elena Ferrante or Stieg Larsson come along, we devour their books. What if I gave myself a challenge this year to read novels by authors of different nationalities without repeating them? Now that's an idea.

By the time I came up with this plan, I have already read "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by the English classic D.H. Lawrence,  a dystopian novel "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel and Amy Bloom's "White Houses", historical fiction about Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. I have spent my biggest Anglo-Saxon credits and had to get more creative at once!

Getting  book recommendations was easy. My German friend Anne advised me to read Peter Stamm, a Swiss author, whose many novels had been translated into English. I read his early novella "Agnes" about a relationship between a writer and his muse, set in Chicago. I then picked up "Adèle", the latest book by the author of "Lullaby", Leïla Slimani. Slimani lives in France and writes in French but she was born in Morocco. "Adèle" is a short introspective novel about a woman addicted to sex. It was not until "Jamilia" by Chingiz Aïtmatov that my little project has finally borne fruit. 

Chingiz Aïtmatov (1928-2008) is a Kyrgyz-Soviet writer who wrote both in his native Kyrgyz and in Russian.  He wrote "Jamilia" in Russian in 1957. It's a novella about love set in a small Kyrgyz aul (village) at the time of the Second World War. It's "a simple and beautiful evocation of time, place and the power of love... deserves to be known as one of the world's great and timeless love stories", says a review by Booktrust. I was taken away by the beautiful narrative of a master storyteller: it's impossible to believe that it took Aïtmatov less than 100 pages to transport me to another world and make me long for it days after I finished the book. I would not have picked this slim volume from a charity bookstore in Chiswick unless I was deliberately looking for an unusual author to read. 

My challenge has proven to be highly infectious. I received many tantalising recommendations in the last few weeks and my Kindle is now brimming with samples. My agent and friend Charlotte said I should read "The Last Children of Tokyo" by Yoko Tawada, while my Japanese friend recommended me "Let the Right One In" by a Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. The shop assistants at Waterstones in Covent Garden asked whether they could give me their favourite books by international authors and now my list has "The Vegetarian" by a Korean author Han Kang and "The Radetzky March" by an Austrian Joseph Roth. I ordered a novel by the Romanian author Herta Müller, who, as it turns out, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2008.  I had no idea! 

The possibilities are endless. Even if you are not a fan of translated fiction, just going through a pile of books by Irish, Scottish, Australian, South African, Canadian, English, US and Indian writers would get you through to the summer at the very least. It's a superb opportunity to dive into Nordic Noir (think Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) or perhaps go for a French classic (Colette? Hugo? Camus?). It's your time to tackle "War and Peace" (although I personally would suggest "Anna Karenina" instead). 

There is something magical in setting yourself a reading challenge. It's vastly more pleasant than trudging through a Dry January or a similarly depressing New Year resolution. And it seems to have weaned me off telly for a while. I am now reading Michelle Obama's "Becoming" (non-fiction is off the challenge) but I am already looking forward to diving back into fiction. The more weird and wonderful, the better. Happy reading!

When I first started looking at start-ups to fund via Silvergate Investments,  a good friend advised me to keep track of our investment decisions. Usually, investors take care to write down why they like the business, but noting the reasons for saying "No" is perhaps even more important. If an opportunity I declined ends up being the next big thing, I want to remind myself why I had missed it. More generally, it's good practice to keep a record of our decision-making process and make sure it is as objective as possible.

When I decline an opportunity to invest in a start-up, I always try to give feedback to the founders. It tends to be short and to be point, but it's important to do that rather than just say "No". Sometimes I say "No" rather reluctantly which makes it vital for me to explain my decision both to myself and to the founders. Perhaps it is also useful to share some trends, which may help start-ups pitch better and understand what a typical decline actually means.

1. It's too early.
This is a reason, which comes up a lot. Sometimes I say "too early" to a business which is already revenue-generating but if you are a brand making £300K a year having been around for 8 years, your size may be a reflection of a poor product-customer fit. I cannot invest to scale a business which is not destined to grow.

2. I cannot tell who will be the winner in this market. 
 I look at a lot of consumer-facing businesses and some have impressive founders, technology and even traction. However, if it is a competitive market segment where customer acquisition is a function of marketing spend rather than visible points of difference such as barriers to entry, strong brand, superior product, loyal customers etc. then I have  no way of telling whether it's my horse which will win the race. It's investor's nightmare to be pumping money into competing marketing budgets. Want a good example? Consider direct-to-consumer mattress businesses Casper, Simba, Eve and every Tom, Dick and Harry. They will drive down any hope for making a profit by their aggressive marketing spend. 

3. I don't have the confidence in the founder. 
This may sound like an obvious one but since most of my deal flow consists of female-led businesses, it's a tricky point to consider. Women are sometimes underselling themselves so I'm not looking for overabundant confidence in the founders I meet. Instead, I look for experience, track record, willingness to listen, ability to learn quickly, management skills and grit. Sometimes I come across businesses with good products but when I speak to the founder(s), I doubt their ability to execute their plan. Once I spoke to the founders running a skincare business who said: "Once we become big, we will obviously need to hire a more experienced CEO to manage the business as we don't have the experience." In reality, it's probably much harder to raise a start-up from the ground up than to run a fast-growing, cash-generative beauty brand. Their words have put me off. No one wants founders with a defeatist attitude. 

4. I know nothing about the industry.
Last week I was sitting at a pitch clinic listening to a presentation by a business which aims to disrupt the TV industry. I happen to know quite a bit about the TV market having worked in the industry for three years, so I was both entirely on board when presented with the "disruption" plan AND I also knew that it would be nearly impossible to execute it. This is why I tend to decline opportunities in HealthTech (unless they are B2C) or GovTech or specialist business services. Quite simply I don't have any industry insights, and if the business encounters problems down the line, I'd be kicking myself for investing an in industry I was unfamiliar with.  

5. It's boring.
I think this is what clever people call lack of investor-founder fit. If I'm yawning while I'm reading your deck then no matter how clever your solution is, I won't engage with it. I won't promote it as an investor because I wouldn't be proud of it. When things go wrong as they often do, I will be too annoyed with myself for having to understand the intricacies of accounting software market to be able to help you effectively. 

There are plenty of other reasons which can be industry-specific or relate to the business model. What may not appeal to me in the UK may well appear attractive in India. I have even passed on oversubscribed opportunities before, and I had good reasons for that.

I saw other investors develop some kind of score system to rate an investment opportunity and perhaps it is helpful to them. For me, a score card would only help validate the answer I already know and sometimes it's not even 100% objective.

​As a final point, it helps to remember than investing in one company means necessarily forfeiting an investment in another startup that comes along next. It's about an opportunity cost - my good old economics degree is making itself useful. 

This article was first published as an op-ed by the Financial Times on 18 September 2018.

I was recently at a networking event chatting to a man in his thirties I recognised from university. Like me, he invests in start-ups, so we got on well, peppering the conversation with obligatory industry jargon.

“Are you investing based on product-market fit or just MVP (minimum viable product)?” he asked. I explained that we considered all stages, told him about the sectors we liked, and then I detonated what I knew would be the bomb: “We only invest in women, or men from minority backgrounds.”

“So you are a philanthropist?” he offered. “Good for you!”

He had hit on one of the three standard responses from men I get when I mention that I prioritise female entrepreneurs.

First: “So you are a charity?” This view suggests that women need help from altruistic donors to get their businesses going.

Second: “Ah! You are a social impact fund!” This response insinuates that women cannot possibly make you rich, so there needs to be a social mission attached to give an investor something virtuous to talk about at dinner parties.

Third: “Great, but why would you limit yourself?” This may seem like a fair comment, but if you asked me about my deal flow I would tell you that I reviewed more than 100 opportunities in six months and was blown away by the quality of applications.

Then there is the feedback I get most from women: “Fantastic!” Go figure.

I am neither a charity, nor am I particularly driven by a social mission. Like any investor, my business partner, Waheed Alli , and I want to make money. We invest in women and minority men because such opportunities are largely overlooked — and therefore attractive.

The entrepreneurs I meet often thank me for a “refreshing” conversation, which makes me wonder what kind of questions they get asked by other investors. Tania Boler, co-founder of Elvie, which makes pelvic floor trainers, was told her product was too niche to be backed. That is despite the findings she presented showing that one in three women experience pelvic floor problems and one in 10 will require surgery.

Raising money as a woman is hard. I hear stories about investors stringing female founders along for months, dangling offers of funding, and then asking them out on a date instead. Male entrepreneurs are 86 per cent more likely to be venture capital funded and 56 per cent more likely to secure angel investment, according to a 2017 study from the Entrepreneurs Network. As a result, only 9 per cent of global VC funding in the first quarter of this year went to companies with at least one female founder, according to TechCrunch.

This lack of investment is closely correlated with the number of women in decision-making roles in VC. Before we backed Tessa Cook, co-founder of neighbour-to-neighbour surplus food-sharing app Olio, she met with dozens of potential investors. “My conversion rate of female investors was over 75 per cent, whereas male venture capitalists converted at less than 10 per cent,” she said.

Women-run businesses may well be overlooked because of subconscious bias. Investment is all about risk assessment and a male investor will understandably find it easier to relate to a man who went to the same school as him, or has similar interests. A woman pitching a tampon subscription business to a team of men will not enjoy much rapport. Early-stage investing in particular relies less on hard data and more on gut feel.

But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a mainstream VC investor is missing the trick. First Round Capital published a report finding that the female-founded companies in its portfolio outperformed male-founded companies by 63 per cent, as measured by return to investors over 10 years.

​If venture capitalists want a slice of that pie, they need to hire women investors and give them the power to make investment decisions. After all, why limit yourselves?

​I leave sizzling August heat behind and enter a cool, faintly damp corridor lit by harsh LED light. The door behind me - a foot thick - remains opened (I turn around to check). I'm now inside Tirana’s largest underground bunker, built in the 1970s to accommodate the entire Albanian government in case of a nuclear attack. It was one of the 173,000 bunkers constructed on the orders of the paranoid communist leader Enver Hoxha. After the fall of communism in Albania in 1991, most of the bunkers scattered around the country were abandoned. This one has been converted into BUNK’ART, a history museum.

As one of few visitors, I can't help but feel the oppressing chill of the place. Here is Hoxha’s office and bedroom with a spartan single bed. Here is a cupboard with gas masks should you wish to venture out. Unbelievably, there is even a large assembly hall inside. In other rooms museum curators have chosen to show the history of Albania in black and white photographs covering the country’s occupation by Italian fascists in 1939-1943, German invasion in 1943-1944 and isolated communist dictatorship under Hoxha until his death in 1985. The exhibition is excellent. It unnerves and devastates. ​

Back outside I am grateful for the sunlight. I catch a ray cheekily pointing to a fig tree with a handful of ripe fruit. I help myself to a few honey-dripping figs and catch a bus back into the centre of Tirana. Here I join a walking tour led by a couple of local guides. It’s not the sights that I am after - I want to learn about the people who have inherited the country’s painful history. I am not disappointed. The guide Eri, who is in his early 40s, tells us many personal anecdotes which help to understand Albania today. He recalls how Christian missionaries arrived in Tirana and used to give out free chocolates after sermons. Eri attended the sermons diligently every Sunday because he had never even tasted chocolate before. And then he tells us a story about bananas, which first appeared in Albania in 1991. “My mother thought they weren’t real - she was too afraid to taste one!” Other tourists laugh in disbelief. I simply nod recalling my own “bananaless" childhood in the Soviet Union.
 
Exploring eerie underground bunkers and learning about incredible hardship under self-imposed economic isolation isn’t everyone’s idea of a summer holiday. After leaving Tirana I visit Albania’s picture-perfect castles of Berat, Gjirokastër and Shkodra, ancient Roman and Ottoman ruins at the archeological park of Butrint, swim in idyllic waters of the Ionian sea and hike in the majestic Accursed Mountains. In-between I travel by bus munching on sweet figs and I keep spotting creepy bunkers, popping by the road all over Albania. My mind travels back to the underground labyrinth of Tirana and its heart-breaking stories. Perhaps one needs a dash of bitterness to appreciate a perfect summer break. 

Four months ago I teamed up with a British businessman Lord Waheed Alli to launch a start-up investment fund. We invest in innovative, consumer-facing businesses, run by women and/or minority founders. So far we have reviewed 75 investment opportunities and invested in two of them. I attended several pitch events, sifted through some excellent (and some terrible) presentations, downloaded many new apps and spoke to founders based in New York, LA, Bangalore, Cambridge and, of course, London. It's been a fascinating journey so far, I've learned a lot quickly and thought I'd share some insights here with you.    

The obvious place to start is to tell you about the companies we have invested in and why. The first company is called Outfox Drinks - it's a new brand of "dry" wine launching this summer in the UK. Outfox wines are completely alcohol-free, they taste great and are low sugar and calories. They are great for socialising if you are a teetotaller or are simply having a "dry" night, but aren't keen on having yet another glass of water or a carbonated sugary drink. 

I met Jessica, the founder of Outfox Drinks, at a pitch event at the AllBright Club. I was immediately impressed by her presentation: it was clear that her start-up was solving a problem and targeting a large and growing consumer market. Jessica was previously at Kraft Foods where she looked after Vita Coco, which means she has a direct and relevant experience of growing a beverage brand. Jessica appeared to be confident and her presentation materials were superb. I wasn't looking to invest in a consumer product but her pitch was the best - she caught my attention. Ultimately, we decided to invest in Outfox because it offered an innovative product which tasted great, had an immediate appeal as a brand and because we liked the founder.  

Our second investment is Olio - a neighbour-to-neighbour surplus food sharing app. Olio helps people and businesses give away unwanted food rather than waste it. The reason Olio is a compelling business became obvious as soon as I downloaded the app: there were 6,000 Olio users within a 5km radius from me; someone just posted a loaf of proper spelt sourdough bread unsold during the day by a local bakery - I requested it, made pick-up arrangements and got a free loaf of the best sourdough I'd ever tasted. I also got rid of spice mixes I don't use within a minute(!) of posting them on the app. Some entrepreneurial fellow posted "25% the food bill at your local restaurant" - the ad was soon taken down by the company but this is precisely how Olio is going to make money once they activate their revenue model. They are already getting paid by some retailers to pick up their unsold food such as sandwiches and give it away via the app.

Olio was designed to solve a huge and acute problem. It is tapping into the rising awareness of food waste and sustainability globally.  The company's founders, Tessa and Saasha, impressed me as ambitious, super hard-working and capable. Olio is innovative, fast-growing, and it makes a real positive impact on local communities. 

Now let me give you a few specific tips on how to get attention from potential investors.

1. Make yourself stand out

Angel investors, VC funds and investor syndicates receive a dozen of pitches a day. They don't have time to meet every single entrepreneur for a coffee - they would be permanently wired and exhausted otherwise. When you are getting in touch, spend hours to perfect your email so that it is short, straight to the point and has a hook. I won't meet you, I won't even open your presentation or click on a link to your website unless you have grabbed my attention within the first paragraph of your email. In the last four months I only met one person to hear out his pitch knowing nothing about it in advance. Why the exception? It was a lovely day and instead of offering to buy me a coffee, he suggested we go for a walk by the Thames. He stood out, I got hooked. (Sadly, his business idea wasn't very exciting...)

2. Get that pitch deck right

Presentations are hard, but if a pitch deck doesn't tell me why this is a golden opportunity, then I am likely to lose interest before we get a chance to meet. To give you a concrete example, Outfox Drinks pitch looked beautiful, told me everything about the target market, the problem and how it intends to solve it, the vision for the brand and the plan of how the company will get there. I got information on the founder. I learned about the competition. I got excited by the business plan and the unique selling points. I got facts and pretty pictures. A good pitch tells a story. A bad pitch is an amalgamation of disjointed slides. 

3. It's all about you

People investing in early stage businesses take on a lot of risk. Most start-ups fail no matter how brilliant their ideas are or how big is the addressable market. It's not even about the idea - it's all about execution. And who is in charge of that? You! Investors back entrepreneurs, not businesses. A start-up is too early to judge on its own merit so investors turn to the founder's background instead. It is no wonder that "serial entrepreneurs" find it relatively easy to raise money. Tessa and Saasha at Olio used to manage teams which gives me reassurance that as their start-up grows, they'll be able to hire, inspire and retain the best talent. As a founder, you have to sell yourself, so go through your CV and find the most relevant experience which will make you look investible. 

4. Remember that no one owes you anything

Even before I started my current role I met many entrepreneurs looking for funding. Most of them got a meeting with a potential angel investor through an introduction. Sometimes they were recommended by a more experienced founder; sometimes they knew someone who knew someone and scored a meeting as a favour. The thing is, all that glitters isn't gold. Even if you found a way to open doors, it doesn't mean that investors will meet you with a cheque book in hand. It is still all about you and your business. I once met two founders who wanted to launch a money saving app. They wanted to get funding before they even created a prototype. They were surprised I wasn't very impressed maybe because they thought their charm would do the trick. In reality, tons of businesses get to the stage of a minimum viable product on a shoestring budget - now that's impressive and will get you attention. 

5. Find a way to relate to the investor you are meeting

Finding a right investment opportunity is a numbers game. Flipping it around, entrepreneurs must be more discerning. It is true that you might end up speaking to dozens of investors, but put your best foot forward every time. This means finding a way to relate to the person you are speaking to. It's easy to do some research ahead of your pitch using LinkedIn, Twitter and other relevant online sources. Find an engaging way to break the ice and the conversation will flow much easier.

Also, remember that investors are biased. They don't mean to be, but they are only human. A 2016 study from the Entrepreneurs Network stated that only 9% of funding into UK start-ups went to women-run businesses. According to a Women in UK VC study commissioned by a non-profit organisation Diversity VC in 2017, only 18% of investment professionals in UK VCs are women and only 13% of decision-makers are female. 48% of UK VC firms have no women on their investment teams at all. It's pretty obvious that there is a correlation between mostly male decision-makers and mostly male founders getting funded. So if you are a woman looking for capital for your start-up, find female angel investors, investor syndicates focussed on female founders (e.g. Angel Academe) or approach female executives at VC funds. You may well find it easier to relate to them and vice versa. 

I recently had a conversation with a Russian couple about a tax reform in Uzbekistan. I said I was very impressed with the Uzbek spokeswoman who had addressed the nation and explained that the key objective of the proposed tax reform is to change the mindset of Uzbek citizens who should understand that the taxes they pay go towards building roads, hospitals, schools and libraries. This is precisely what is amiss in Russia. My companions were astounded to discover that when we talk about the National Health Service or foreign aid in Britain, we discuss government spending from the point of view of taxpayers. It's taxpayers who own schools, hospitals, roads and pay for the troops being sent to the Middle East. It's the term commonly featured in the media - in turn, it's being used by Brits in everyday speech.

Just now looking up the word "taxpayers" on Google News brings up a handful of headlines to illustrate my point: "Academies are using taxpayers' money to pay 'unjustifiably' high salaries to senior staff, MPs warn"; "Air pollution: UK government's failed legal battles cost taxpayers" and "Wrong waste in recycle bins costing taxpayer thousands says report" . 

By contrast, in Russia, the word "taxpayers" isn't used very often; instead, it's "the state". The state owns schools, invests (or doesn't invest) in roads, writes off foreign debt to Venezuela and builds a new hospital in Syria.  It's the state not the taxpayers who bankrolls military parades and finances television networks. As a result, I can think of at least three sad consequences of such linguistic practice. First, paying taxes has no connection with education, healthcare or infrastructure in the minds of most Russians. It's considered a burden rather than a fair obligation of every citizen. Secondly, in contrast to the Western values of "self-made men", many Russian people expect the state to look after them and make things better. Individual citizen responsibility is not part of the daily agenda. Thirdly, when the Kremlin makes an announcement about building a hospital in Syria, few people are thinking "hang on, it's my money - is this really the best way to use it?". 

Western readers are probably finding it hard to believe this. Surely, they think, bright people in Russia can see through the veneer of the language. Sadly, neurolinguistic programming is a powerful thing. Our brains latch on to familiar speak and don't bother questioning what we hear once a concept is internalised. Indeed, it is entirely possible to get stuck with the language of your milieu if you are not deliberately trying to challenge your worldview now and then. 

The language we speak as a nation is perhaps less influential than your own personal vocabulary. A couple of months ago I stayed with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I couldn't help but notice that her favourite catchphrase was "isn't it terrible?". Regardless what we talked about, my friend found terrible things in politics, art, food and the weather. Granted, all these things can be awful, but it appeared to me that finding faults became my friend's daily mantra. With that in mind it becomes very difficult to see anything positive. The negative mindset prevails, affects your daily life and becomes hard to shift. 

Let me finish this article on a positive note. A few years back someone sent me a link to a YouTube video which featured an interesting talk about the use of language to treat anxiety. The speaker recommended using toddler language to calm yourself down. Apparently, even if you are well in your 40s or 50s, your brain still remembers the language your mother used to soothe you when you were little. If you are feeling anxious or fearful, saying "Janochka, vse budet khorosho" (Little Jana, everything will be all right) aloud,  imitating your mother's voice, should help to calm yourself down. About a year ago I started coldswimming in a natural pond. In winter, the water is just 1-3C degrees warm. As I enter the pond, I frequently talk to myself as my mother would, counterbalancing the natural response which screams "What the f**k are you doing??!!". It works every time.

P.S. If you have a link to the video I refer to above, please send it to me and I'll post it here.

If you are a young parent, there comes a time when you'll be explaining to your children how babies are made. You might buy them a book with child-friendly illustrations or give your own talk (you will still probably ask Google for help or buy a parenting book to find something age-appropriate). And so the "big reveal" will probably feature something like this:

Babies are made when a male sperm meets a female egg. Each man has lots of sperm cells stored in his testicles. A woman has internal organs called ovaries which release one egg each month. When a man and a woman make love, sperm travel from a man's penis into a woman's vagina. Man's sperm cells compete with each other to reach that one precious egg. Only the fastest and the strongest sperm manages to get to the egg and impregnate it.

There is another way to tell this story:

A female egg is sitting in the uterus and looking at all the male sperm cells swimming towards her. She selects one sperm she likes, temporarily lowers the chemical barrier, sucks the sperm in and raises the barrier once again so that none of the other sperm can get in.

Scientifically speaking, I have described exactly the same process, but notice how different these two stories are. In the first story, we have a "princess" waiting to be "rescued", and we applaud male strength and agility. The female egg here is passive, while the sperm is the noble warrior doing all the work.  In the second story, it's the female egg who is in control. She is there screening the candidates, making the selection and putting up her defences against the unwanted intruders. She isn't a "princess", she is the boss.

For me, this is a powerful example of how gender bias controls our everyday narrative. Until I heard the alternative story of conception (on BBC Woman's Hour), I have always thought about it as a male sperm contest. It's like suddenly realising that virtually all movies released in the last century starred glorious men with women in supporting roles. It's the same bias that we apply subconsciously when praising boys for their strengths and girls for their beauty. Everyday gender bias is invisible until we start paying attention.

It's 21st century: our society is finally focussing on the problems of gender pay gap; lack of diversity in business and arts; gender discrimination in sports and gender bias that exists in the seemingly neutral science and technology. What we need is to examine our language, especially when addressing children, who, like sponges, absorb prejudice in the environment they grow up in. Please remember to praise girls for their wit and strength and boys for their sensitivity and compassion. When discussing husbands or boyfriends, it's time women stop using such expressions as "Sam is helping me about the house" because Sam (bless him, he sounds like a keeper) is only doing his fair share of running a household. Try to notice when you are saying "Football World Cup" referring to men's football because it's time to be specific whether we mean women's or men's game. 

Many of us - men and women - want equality of opportunities and are hopeful for change. Yet change isn't something we should be expecting to come from the top. Our politicians, employers, filmmakers and scientists need us to act in small but meaningful ways to change everyday behaviour and narrative. They'll follow suit. Young parents, we are all relying on you. 

Last night writer Mohsin Hamid was in London talking about his latest novel Exit West, shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker prize. One the main protagonists, Nadia, wears a burqa - indeed, we meet her on the very first page of the novel "clad from the tips of her toes to the bottom of her jugular notch in a flowing black robe." As we turn pages, we learn that Nadia cut her family ties and lives on her own. She has a job and rides a motorbike. She enjoys sex and marijuana. In fact, we learn that Nadia wears burqa to ward off unwanted advances.

When Hamid was asked about Nadia, his liberal burqa-wearing protagonist, he explained that he wanted to tackle a stereotype most of us have about veiled women. He told us about a wife of his friend in Lahore who is a famous TV presenter in Pakistan. She too wears a burqa outside simply because she gets pestered too much otherwise. Hamid also shared another story of his father, a university professor, showing him a photo of a university canteen in the 1970s and now. In the first photo there are young men wearing jeans and turtle necks smoking in the canteen. In the second photo there are many covered women. His first reaction was to point out that Pakistan used to be much more liberal back in the days with students wearing Western clothes. Prompted by his father he then noticed that in fact there are just a couple of women in the first picture while half of the students in the more recent photograph were women. Indeed, today there are more female than male students in every university in Pakistan. So what is the true sign of progress: Western attire or women enrolling in higher education? 

Hamid's talk made me think my recent experience of a stereotype tackled head on. I was visiting King's Canyon in Watarrka National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. There was a group of us, perhaps 15 people altogether. There was a couple from the US travelling with their two children aged about 17 and 19. The father was telling the guide about their travel itinerary. They planned an epic 33-day journey visiting Australia, Thailand, China and Japan. It sounded like a very expensive trip, and I assumed at once that the father was probably a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who had cashed out to take his family on such a long and pricey trip. I even found myself labelling his kids as spoilt brats for no good reason. And then something prompted me to talk to them. It turned out that the father used to work for the US army and afterwards he was a civil servant. He began saving for this trip ten years ago so that when he retired, he could take his family on an unforgettable journey. He had made the final payment for the trip just a month ago and finally there they were exploring the King's Canyon in the Red Centre of Australia. I told him how much I admired his endeavour and his accomplishment especially in the age where no one seemed to be saving money anymore.

The only way to crush prejudice is to start a conversation. We all need to admit that we are inherently biased and prejudiced. It's just how we are built with our brains programmed to jump to conclusions especially when encountering something familiar ("rich Americans") or different ("women in burqa").  It's up to us to take a step back and challenge our primitive instincts with more sophisticated examination of our thought process. This is the necessary step to effect bigger changes in society. What we need is to hear men in power admitting that they were doing nothing about the gender pay gap and all-male boards at their organisations before they had understood the importance of diversity and fair remuneration of their talent. Admitting to prejudice is the first step to tackle the way the society conforms to stereotypes. The second step is to act and make changes.